Maverick's Update

Amazon’s Prime Video is running a documentary right now on all the James Bond musical themes called The Sound of 007. Some of the most famous musicians of all time composed themes for the long-running films, including Marvin Hamlisch, who — with his cheeky lyrist — composed The Spy Who Loved Me theme song Nobody Does It Better. It is a nod to the fact that James Bond is just the best at all of the things he is best at — just like the National Academy of Medicine (“NAM”). Founded as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1970, NAM is a private, non-profit organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences (part of the Congressional charter organization established in 1863 that gathers our country’s exceptional scientific leaders). In health wonk circles, NAM is most famous for its reports in 1999 (To Err is Human) that addressed patient safety solutions to medical errors and 2001 (Crossing the Quality Chasm) that made words like “evidence-based” and “patient-centered” and “transparent” a standard part of health care policy discussions. This week, NAM announced a new report on clinician burnout — arguably the biggest crisis of our current health care system. Most interesting to us in the 88-page report are the five recommendations about how to streamline prior authorization processes with automation and clinical decision support tools. This is pretty timely of the usually slow-moving NAM, because the annual regulatory burden report of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA represents 55,000+ medical practice executives across all specialties) just said that the slow-moving prior authorization process is one of the biggest burdens on physicians. CMS is also expected to propose a rule soon (currently under consideration by the White House Office of Management and Budget) that would require health plans and providers to streamline prior authorization processes. Cue the brass… as James Bond said: “Where there is smoke, there’s fire.”